


In Reverse

by riverbanks



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Body Image, Canon Era, Getting Back Together, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Sexual Tension, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-10-15
Packaged: 2018-08-19 09:21:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8199869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riverbanks/pseuds/riverbanks
Summary: This is where the night pulls you inNothing like old times, when we were friendsAnd this, this is where the water callsAnd severance sings me out again-Or: There’s a pool in the castle.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Вспять](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11054121) by [Perfect_criminal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Perfect_criminal/pseuds/Perfect_criminal)



> This is a gift to [hummelista](http://archiveofourown.org/users/hummelista), who asked for something based on [this prompt](http://otpisms.tumblr.com/post/151152097027/otp-idea-601): _Imagine Person A sitting beside a pool but not wanting to swim because they’re self conscious of their body_.  
>  This fic is also linked [on my tumblr](http://riverbanks.tumblr.com/post/151302232780).  
> -  
> 

There’s a pool in the castle.

Keith is the first to find out, by accident, while looking for a library Allura mentioned in passing before, but he doesn't tell anyone about it. It doesn’t occur him to -he figures everyone else will have found it before him, or will eventually find it themselves, too.

They never do.

They find out about it one morning, when Keith walks into the kitchen with his hair dripping wet, joining them at the table with a drenched towel laid around his shoulders.

“The hell did you do,” Lance asks between spoonfuls of goo. “Flush your head in the toilet or what?”

“Ah, you’ve found the pool!” Coran cheerily interjects before Keith can think of a good comeback.

He nods, and that leaves the rest of them gaping, dumbfounded.

“There’s a pool in the castle,” Pidge says, and it’s not a question.

“Of course there is a pool,” Allura scoffs. “It’s a castle, there are all sorts of leisure rooms. What manner of uncivilized-”

“There’s a pool in the castle,” Pidge repeats.

Keith pulls up a bench and sits down beside Shiro, reaching for the bowl of breakfast Shiro has barely touched. He glances up at Shiro as he downs the first bite of goo with a glass of water, and Shiro’s face is something else then -his brows drawing up in shock, like Keith has committed the greatest of treasons by hiding this secret from them, and it’s what finally cracks him up. Keith smirks at him, shrugging lightly.

“Thought you knew,” he mumbles around a mouthful of green paste.

“There’s a pool in the castle,” Pidge mutters to herself, a third time again.

* * *

 

They hit the pool almost every day after that.

Hunk and Coran like to relax in the water after their daily sessions on the combat simulator. Pidge isn’t the greatest swimmer, but she likes to belly dive, and make waves, and start water fights with the nearest unsuspecting victim. That’s usually Allura, who chides her for it at first, but is easily baited enough to eventually join the fight, the two splashing water all over the place.

Lance is the most excited about it, going on and on about what a great swimmer he is, how he was on the swimming team in high school and how that scholarship was what got him into the Galaxy Garrison in the first place, and so on and so forth. Keith would like nothing more than for him to shut up about it already, but Allura says she’s glad to see that swimming has motivated Lance so much that he’s even started waking up earlier for it every day; that anything that keeps morale up is a good thing for the team in the end. Keith can’t disagree with that.

Keith does agree, ultimately, that suddenly having a pool to relax the muscles in, or start splashing fights in, or swim twenty laps around in the morning at, is a great morale boost for everyone, in their own way. But sharing his discovery with everyone else does come with a problem: everyone’s morale boost is so damn _loud_ , he can’t even hear his own thoughts under the water anymore; and that’s how his short-lived, less than a week long routine of taking a quiet morning swim before breakfast comes to an end.

* * *

 

Keith starts shuffling around his visits to the pool to different times of the day, trying to find the best time to come around when there’s no one, or at least not as many people around. It’s not the swimming he’s going for, so much as the stillness of the water, when the pool is empty save for himself. It’s quiet down there. It’s peaceful.

That’s how Keith ends up trying for the latest hours of the shifts they’ve decided to count as nights on the ship, well past dinner, well past their self-imposed lights out. And that’s how he’s also the first to find out at which strange hours of the night Shiro’s been using the pool, too.

“Little late for a swim,” he greets as he enters the hall, telegraphing his steps as  much as he can, careful not to startle Shiro with any sudden noises.

Shiro turns and smiles at him, welcoming him with a nod. “Shouldn’t that be my line?” he asks with a glance at the towel in Keith’s hands, but there’s no reproach in his voice.

Keith gives him a look and walks over to where Shiro sits by the edge of the pool. “Using” it is a little much for what he’s actually doing -Shiro’s just sitting there, still in his t-shirt and slacks, his feet dipped into the water. From his hair, still dry, it doesn’t look like he’s been swimming at all.

“Figured you’d be coming in with the others,” Keith says as he pulls his shirt over his head. “Team bonding exercises and all.”

Shiro laughs at that. “Let the guys have some fun.”

It sounds a little more self-depreciative than Keith would like.

“You should try that, sometimes,” he counters, taking his shoes off. When Shiro raises an eyebrow at him, Keith gestures at the water. “Having fun, you know.”

Shiro makes a mock-offended face, and points at his feet, now paddling under the water like a clumsy duck learning to swim. “I _am_ having fun, see.”

“Shiro…” Keith starts, but Shiro looks away, rolling his shoulders awkwardly as his feet slow down to a stop, and Keith decides to let it go.

“Do you want me to go?” Shiro asks, and Keith says _No._ a little too fast for comfort.

He takes a breath and schools his voice into something a little less eager. “No, it’s ok,” he tries again. “Stay.”

The curve on Shiro’s lips is small, almost shy. “I can go,” he insists. “I know you don’t come here to swim.”

Keith has no answer for that, so Shiro continues, making small waves with his feet. “The water’s nice, isn’t it. Soothing. Grounds you down.”

Keith’s not sure then which one of them Shiro’s talking to, or about.

“Only thing that keeps me grounded here is having you around,” he answers, and then he’s stepping down the ladder and into the warm, clear water.

His back is turned to Shiro, and he doesn’t turn around to see his face, or wait for a reply. Holding his breath in one sharp intake of air, Keith sinks himself under.

* * *

 

He goes back the next night, and the night after that, and every next night for  the rest of the week, and Shiro’s still there when he comes over. Keith’s glad for small mercies, and glad he hasn’t scared Shiro off too much yet.

There’s a line between them. There’s always been a line between them, for as long as Keith and Shiro have known each other at all -and Keith tries to respect it, but the line shifts nearer and farther between one day and the next, and sometimes it’s hard to tell where it stands right now, this very moment.

It’s never been harder to tell where they stand than now; since things changed between them. Since Shiro left; since he came back.

“You wanna get in?” Keith asks him one night. “Water’s cooler tonight.”

Shiro smiles at him, shaking his head in an almost apology. “I’m good here, thank you.”

Keith swims closer to him, offers out a hand. “We used to swim together in the pool, at the Garrison,” he says, testing the territory. Shiro’s memory is still spotty, and sometimes he’s not sure how much Shiro still remembers, or even wants to. “You remember that?”

Shiro’s smile twists up into something else, something wicked that Keith hasn’t seen in his face in a long time, and the look in Shiro’s eyes when he stares up at Keith tells him enough about just how much he remembers.

“We used to do a lot more than _swimming_.”

Keith puts his hands up then, knowing where to draw the line himself, for both of their sakes, even if that line seems to be running so far away some days that he can barely see it anymore.

“I’m not asking for anything you’re not ready to give,” Keith tells him, and part of him thinks the word should be _willing_ , willing to give; but part of him knows that _will_ is the least of their problems.

“I just miss seeing you have fun like that,” he adds, and he can’t help the smile the memory of Shiro messing around in the pool brings to  him, of Shiro splashing Keith in the face and dunking his head under the water. “The way your dumb bangs look, all wet.”

“ _Hey_ ,” Shiro objects, but he’s laughing now. He dips his hand on the water and brings it to his hair, brushing his bangs back. “Better?”

Water drips down his face and onto his shirt, small spots clinging to the skin of his shoulders and turning the white of the fabric see-through here and there, and Keith has to restrain himself from swimming closer and sucking the air out of Shiro’s lungs. The memories that come to him of the last time he saw Shiro like this, his hair wet and sticking to his temple, sweat running down his face, are much less innocent than the picture of the man before him now, beaming at him like a little boy, so proud of his corny joke.

“Much better,” Keith agrees, and then he’s swimming away to the deeper end of the pool while Shiro watches him with something else drawn over his face that they're better off leaving alone for now.


	2. Chapter 2

Shiro does start to show up during the day, when the others are around.

He shows up early in the morning to watch Lance swimming, and encourage him with compliments and questions about his technique. And though they’re the only ones in there that early in the day, everyone else gets to hear all about it when Lance spends the next few days gloating to no end.

Keith rolls his eyes at him and looks proper annoyed while Lance is still looking, but he gets it. Shiro is just a person, just a guy who bleeds and breaks like any of them, Keith knows that better than anyone else. But he’s also so much more than that to them, and the feeling of getting his approval on anything they do is a high that’s hard to wanna ride out of.

Shiro follows Hunk to the pool after their morning workout, and Keith falls back with them to hang out for a while. Shiro stays out of the water with only his feet dipped in as usual, and they talk about the new simulations they just ran through, about some diagnostics Hunk’s been running through the lions; and while he can’t make out the words to their conversation with his head under the water and his ears fully clogged, Keith finds the echo and the cadence of their combined voices soothing as it filters through the surface, a little distance away.

When Keith finally comes up, Shiro has left already, and Hunk’s staring at him with a sharp, knowing look that would make Keith shuffle on his feet, if he was standing on solid ground.

“You two, man,” Hunk snorts, shaking his head.

Keith pretends to miss that, and spends the rest of the hour until lunch resting beside Hunk in comfortable silence, letting the water work down the weird tension that’s slowly creeping up to his shoulders. Trying to think of where he needs to improve his form on the simulator, trying not to think about what “you two” even means at this point.

Shiro also shows up in the afternoon, standing near the water watching Pidge and Allura swim around for a while, and he laughs when the two start their usual bickering that derails into a full water fight, only two baiting lines in. But when Allura reaches out to his feet and plays at pulling Shiro in, he jumps back like a skittish pyjak and his face goes blank like he might slip away for a tic, before he recovers and gives her the least convincing smile of reassurance she’s ever seen; saying he’s alright, she just caught him a bit distracted there.

That’s what Allura tells Keith later, at least, worried that she might have broken some unknown human socialization protocol, or at least certain she’s made Shiro uncomfortable, when it wasn't her intention. She’d seen Hunk do the same to Lance a few days earlier, and assumed it was a friendly gesture.

Keith assures Allura she did nothing wrong, it’s just that Shiro doesn’t like to swim much, but she couldn’t have possibly known that. It’s not exactly the truth, but the truth is something Keith doesn’t really understand yet, and that’s no answer to give. He swears to her that if she’d done it to any of the others instead, they would’ve considered it a friendly joke and laughed about it, and Allura seems to accept that, even if she still wants to apologize to Shiro again.

Keith has no argument to that -at a guess, he imagines Shiro doesn’t want to dwell on it, but it’s not his business to meddle in their friendship beyond what Allura asked of him. Shiro and her can handle the rest of it between the two of them.

* * *

 

Later, at dinner, Keith gives Hunk a high five for pulling Lance into the pool, saying he’d have done the same, and even the stern glare Shiro gives them is worth the sight of Lance almost blowing a gasket all over again.

“You did _not,_ ” he snaps at Hunk, pointing a finger dramatically between Keith and him. “I know I can expect anything from _that one_ , but _you_ , man! I _trust_ you, with all my heart, and _this_ is how you-”

Shiro sighs, trying to hide a smile into his food, but Keith catches him at it and the look they exchange makes him feel two whole years younger; takes him back to the Garrison, to joking with Shiro in the cafeteria over something dumb and inconsequential, while Holt tried to make them pay attention to the story he was telling.

Hunk and Lance remind him of Shiro and Matt in the early days, when they were just cadets, the three of them, the two always messing with and poking fun at each other, but always coming through for each other too, their friendship of years going back something Keith had always been careful to keep himself a respectful distance from. Things had changed between them after Shiro graduated, after he went from being a senior student to being their senior officer, and suddenly Keith and Matt had more in common with each other than any of them had with Shiro -but even that hadn’t lasted enough for him to really know Holt as more than Shiro’s best friend, in the end.

They don’t really talk about Matt anymore these days; but that’s just one of the many things they haven’t found a way to talk about yet.

* * *

 

“The hell you talking about, ‘ _Shiro doesn’t like to swim,_ ’ are you kidding me” Lance corners him one day, and Keith grabs his wrists in the air before Lance’s hands make it to his chest.

“You know he was ‘Varsity, right?” Lance rants on, pulling his hands free and gesturing wildly around, the way he does. “You know he probably has like a wall full of medals back home? You know he was Junior State Champion in high school, right? You guys are out here all full of ‘history’ and whatever, but you don’t know _that_ about him?”

Keith crosses his arms and takes a step back, squinting at him. “You have a shrine to him in your locker, or...?”

Lance pulls a whole lung of air in and almost bursts a vein on his neck with whatever he wants to yell at Keith then, but the moment passes a tic too late. Lance deflates, his shoulders sagging as he stammers a bit, looking for different words to what he really wants to say.

“I started swimming because of him, alright” Lance explains, looking a little sheepish to be having this conversation with _Keith_ , of all people. “Because I saw Shiro swimming and I wanted to be good like that. And I only got into the Garrison because I got good enough at swimming that it made up for my grades, so it’s like… it sounds dumb, but he changed my life, man.”

Keith swallows around the taste the rises to his mouth. He knows what Lance is gonna say next, and he knows it’s gonna sound familiar enough to make it awkward between them.

“And then I got in, and Shiro was the best pilot in the whole damn place, whatever those guys say, and I... wanted to be as good as him at that, too. Better.”

Keith nods, staring at his feet. He doesn’t like having much in common with Lance, it makes his nose twitch for some reason, but he’s not gonna lie to himself -he knows all too well the feeling of looking up to Shiro like that, like an ever unattainable star just out of his reach.

“What else was I gonna tell her?” he grumbles, leaning against the wall. “That Shiro almost had a panic attack because he’s afraid of water or something now?”

Lance reels at that, his eyes three sizes wider, trying to make sense of something as crazy as _that_ , but Keith cuts him short.

“I don’t know if that’s what’s going on,” he amends. “I don’t think it is. But something’s making Shiro jumpy about that damn pool, and I had to tell Allura something. Something that doesn’t make her question him.”

It’s not that Keith thinks Allura would actually replace Shiro as their leader -they don’t even have anyone else to put in his place to begin with- but it still makes Keith’s teeth grind to even consider the thought of Shiro losing the only thing that's keeping him together.

He knows Shiro needs the Black Lion as much as Keith himself needs Shiro around right now. That their sanity is hanging on by a thread the longer they stay here, the farther they go away from Earth, that having something to do, to focus on, an enemy to fight, is the only way to parse what’s happened, what’s still happening to them. And Keith will tell as many lies as he needs to, to himself and everyone else, to make sure Shiro has what he needs.

Lance falls quiet then, leaning against the wall lost in thought like a mirror of him, and Keith shifts on his feet when he realizes, breaking their identical poses and clearing his throat.

“You think they did something to him?” Lance asks.

“I _know_ they did something to him,” Keith nods, solemn. “I just don’t know what.”

“And it’s not the kind thing you just ask,” Lance finishes for him, following the same thought.

Keith sighs, throwing his head back to stare at the lights above them, so bright he has to squeeze his eyes shut for a moment. “I wish I hadn’t found that stupid pool.”

Lance snorts, his mouth twisting up in a sideways smirk, half amused, half resentful, the way Keith is used to Lance looking at him. “For what’s worth it,” he says with a shrug that look every inch as forced as it probably is, “I’m kinda glad you did.”

Lance pulls himself away from the wall then, stretching his arms and turning around to leave. “Sorry about almost punching you. This time, I mean.”

Keith watches Lance’s steps as he walks away, until he’s almost by the threshold where the hall splits two ways, and he’s barely aware of his own voice when he calls Lance back by the name.

“That stuff you said,” he says as Lance turns back to stare at him with an annoyed frown on his face. “About Shiro changing your life. That he’s your hero and all. You ever tell him that?”

Lance blinks at Keith like he’s grown a second head. “Uh, no. That’s some creepy shit to just dump on someone, dude.”

“A little, yeah,” Keith concedes. “But I think he could stand to hear something like that now.”

Lance rolls his eyes, almost his entire head, waving a hand in question like he’s really doubting Keith’s sanity now. “So I just, what? Walk up to him and go, ‘by the way dude, you’re my hero!’ That it?”

Keith pinches the bridge of his nose, taking a deep breath and reminding himself no matter how many good reasons he has for it, Shiro won’t like to hear he punched Lance in the hallway.

“I just mean, I think Shiro could stand to hear right now that he’s important to someone. That he  matters,” Keith argues. “From someone other than me, I guess.”

There’s a beat, and Lance turns fully around to stare at Keith like he really, really wants to throw down any second now. “Shiro matters to _all_ of us, you know,” he deadpans, and his voice is pointed there, a calculated tone of just neutral enough to bite, that Keith’s heard a lot of times coming from himself, but never from Lance before.

Keith shrugs then, his eyes asking the question for him before he turns around to leave, still learning to drop things while he can -who cares what _he_ knows, is the thing.


	3. Chapter 3

“I’ve had some, uh, interesting conversations lately,” Shiro tells him, trying to sound as casual as he can about it.

He’s in his same usual spot by the edge, but lying on his back tonight, watching the stars fly by through the skylight above. Every now and then he dips his fingertips, the human ones, into the water, making the smallest of ripples, then splays his hand in front of his face, stretching his arm as high as it’ll go into the air, watching droplets run down the back of his hand.

“Have you,” Keith acknowledges, running a hand through wet hair, getting it out of his face.

Across the pool, Shiro glances at him. He’s watching Keith wipe the water from his eyes. Roll his shoulders. Try to leave his face as neutral as he can when he turns around to look at him.

“Little awkward, I have to say,” Shiro tells him, looking away with the hint of a smile starting to form on his face, turning back to the stars. “Hunk baked me a cake. A goo cake. It was pretty good, considering. He’s got real talent. Coran was saying something about pyjaks, but then he was crying and Allura had to take him away. I still don’t know what a pyjak is, but I don't know if I want to ask. Oh, and Pidge gave me a... pat. On the shoulder. I had to bend over for that.”

Keith swallows a chuckle down, huffing under his breath. He sinks his chin down on the water a little, letting only the line of his nose above the surface.

“And Lance was…” Shiro sighs, lingering on that for a few tics longer than Keith expects. “I don’t know what that was, but it was pretty awkward.”

Keith gives Shiro a half-pleading look, his lips pursing as he tries not to laugh. “Come on, Shiro. They tried.”

Shiro frowns at him, trying to look berating, trying to look annoyed, but the amused glint in his eyes betrays him. “It was… endearing,” he admits. “A little creepy, but... kind of sweet, too.”

Keith bites his lip to keep himself from laughing now. “Thought you’d wanna hear that one.”

Shiro looks away, sitting up now, and chuckling a little too. He lets his feet touch the water, runs a hand through his hair and holds Keith’s gaze. “Thanks for the pep-talk, cadet.”

Keith salutes him, the gesture coming naturally to him along with the memory of something they’d almost forgot about, and neither Shiro or him can help flinching as it hits both of them like a stone to the head.

 _Thanks for the pep-talk, cadet_ , Shiro had whispered into his ear, and Keith had raised his hand weakly to salute him then, face still buried in Shiro’s chest, their breaths still ragged, limbs tangled in each other’s, sweat sticking to their skin. They were laughing. It had only been a week since Shiro had graduated, and the titles still sounded like a joke at that point. They would start to ring hollow later, put more distance between them as the weeks went by, but right then, in that night, all that mattered was being there with each other. Together.

Shiro is flushing red down to his neck now, and Keith stares despite himself, swallowing dry around the sudden memory that assaults him. The taste of Shiro’s skin in his mouth, fresh stubble scratching against his lips, his teeth grazing the apple of Shiro’s throat, feeling it bob up and down with every gasp that leaves Shiro’s lips.

When Keith tears his eyes away from that reddened patch of skin, he finds Shiro staring straight at him, cheeks burning like fire now, knowing perfectly well what Keith was staring at and what he was thinking about. His eyes say a world of things Keith doesn’t want to confront, not now, and he can’t hold Shiro’s stare for more than a tic before he has to turn around and sink his head under the water again.

It’s quiet, under. The only place quiet enough that he can hear his own heartbeat, the only place where Keith can shut down, center and find himself again.

When he comes back up for air, Shiro isn’t watching him anymore. He’s brought his feet up from the water, sitting cross legged now, staring but not really looking at the hands folded over his lap. Keith suddenly doesn’t want to be in the water anymore, either.

He pulls himself out at the nearest border, not bothering to swim back around to the ladder, and walks over to where Shiro sits, to get his towel from the chair where he left his clothes. They don’t speak, or look at each other, for what seems like a lifetime or two in the minutes between.

He’s dried himself up his waist when Shiro’s voice comes over, almost low enough to miss. “You told Allura I can’t swim.”

“I didn’t say you _can’t_ , I said-” Keith starts to argue, but he realizes right away that it doesn’t matter. The exact words he did or didn’t say aren’t the point here. “...I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s okay,” Shiro says, but it doesn’t sound okay at all.

Keith finishes drying up to his neck, slips his shirt on and wraps the towel around his shoulders. He walks over to Shiro and sits down beside him, pulling his legs up against his chest and wrapping his arms around his knees. He knows it’s just the water drying on his skin, but the room is starting to feel a lot colder now.

He glances over to the side, trying to look at Shiro without turning to face him, and the glint of the arm catches his eye. Keith forgets about it sometimes -it slips past him in the middle of everything else that runs through his head all day, and it’s always a shock to be starkly reminded of it like this. To glance at Shiro and suddenly realize that _thing_ is there now, where the rest of his arm isn’t anymore.

He still can't bring himself to ask Shiro what happened there. Part of him thinks Shiro doesn’t want to talk or think about it, part of him suspects even Shiro himself doesn't know.

“It’s not about that, right?” Keith asks, nodding at the arm. “You have to shower with this thing on, so it’s not like you can’t get it wet or something like that.”

Shiro’s lips tighten, and Keith wants to kick himself in the teeth. “Your arm, sorry. It’s not a thing, it’s your arm. I’m sorry.”

He sighs, burying his face in his arms. “Yeah, I’m fucking this whole thing up.”

He can hear Shiro take a breath and start to say something, but then his voice catches and he says only _Keith_ , in such a startled, such a gentle tone that Keith has to look up at him, a little wary of what he’ll find.

He finds Shiro shaking his head at him with that small, affectionate smile Keith misses more than anything in the world.

A droplet of water runs down his forehead and drips square on his nose, and Keith realizes: he forgot to dry his hair again. It’s a habit he picked up forever ago, in what seems like another lifetime now -”forgetting” to dry his hair when they left the pool, so Shiro would grab him by his towel and pull him close, running the ends of the towel through Keith’s hair as they kissed one more time, and one more, and just one last time, before the last bell warned them to run off, slip back to their rooms just in time for lights out.

Shiro picks up his own towel, as dry as every night he brings it in, and gestures for Keith to turn around. Keith does, and a few shuffles later he feels Shiro’s hands on his hair, fingers running through and loosening a few tangles before he replaces them with the towel, patting gently against his head to soak up the water. Keith sighs into the feeling, finding yet another small thing he didn’t even know he missed about Shiro in this -how gentle his hands could be, how soft they could feel for a guy who rode bikes for a hobby, who piloted fighter jets for a living.

“It is, and it isn’t,” Shiro finally answers, and Keith has to rattle the words around in his head for a moment to remember what the question even was. He fights a hum that threatens to leave his throat when Shiro finishes up with his hair and lets his hands slide down to Keith’s shoulders for just a tic before they leave him again.

There's a noise behind him, and Keith turns around to see Shiro tapping on the floor with his metal fingers, a low purple gleam surrounding his hand. Shiro's eyes trace a line up his arm, from his fingers to the lid covering the junction where flesh meets steel, and his smile is the saddest thing Keith's ever seen when Shiro promises him,

“I’ll show you one of these days.”

 


	4. Chapter 4

It’s gruesome work, as fascinating as it nauseates him to look at, and while Keith understands why Shiro doesn’t want anyone else to see it, he finds he can't tear his eyes away.

There’s no clean cut, the way he imagined it. He thought there would be a stump, and then the prosthesis neatly settled below it, maybe bolted to the bone, maybe held in place by a systems of clasps strong enough to endure the strain and pressure of hand to hand combat. But it’s not like that at all.

“Were you awake when they…?”

Shiro shakes his head no, then thinks on it a bit longer. “I don’t know. I don’t think so, but even if I was awake when they started…“

He wouldn’t have been when they finished, for sure.

The flesh at the end of Shiro’s arm is an amorphous mass of skin -it looks like it’s been melted and molded around where the steel begins, the scarring drying in lumps under long and angry stretch lines where the skin wasn’t wide enough to cover the whole structure. A line of thin steel needles covers the circumference of the rim in two rows, digging into the meat of Shiro’s upper arm like claws, hooks holding the rest of it in place and going who knows how deep into his body. It looks monstrous, and Keith can’t stop staring.

He wonders, fascinated, how the structure looks like under the skin. How far it runs into Shiro’s shoulder, how deep into his chest the tubes and needles go, and for a moment his head is filled with intrusive, horrible thoughts, revolting images of what would happen if someone just tore Shiro’s arm right out of him to the end, what would be left of him if he-

The shock of what his own mind is painting in front of his eyes is too much, and Keith finally looks away, bringing a closed fist to his mouth, fighting back his own gag reflex. Shiro rolls his sleeve down and pulls the metal lid up, covering the sight while Keith recovers. Keith expects him to look hurt, disheartened, but not… sympathetic.

“I know,” Shiro reassures him. “I go there too, sometimes.”

Keith settles back beside Shiro, shuffling a little closer to him. It’s past lights out, and this feels familiar, the of them two sitting on Shiro’s bunk in near full darkness, the shadows on their faces cast by the faint red light coming from the emergency leds that never go out. It’s like they’re starting all over again, like Keith is just a fresh recruit and Shiro just a cadet, and they’re... talking. Getting to know each other from scratch. All they’re missing is Holt on the upper bunk, telling the two to get a room.

“We _have_ a room,” Shiro would say, the little shit that he used to be back then, and that would inevitably earn him a pillow to the face.

Keith would flush then, suddenly very aware of himself sitting on his upperclassman’s bunk after lights out. He had excuses to be around Shiro like this, each one more elaborate than the next -cramming for imaginary exams, getting homework tutoring for classes he wasn’t even taking, socializing with the only other guy around this trimester who could speak Japanese -that one had been Holt’s idea; Keith didn’t -and still doesn’t- actually know a single word of Japanese other than the two of Shiro’s name. But the lies served them well, so they used them all while it lasted.

But the truth was, no matter how many excuses they made around their tense, guarded friendship -from day one, from the day they’d met, Keith and Shiro had always been gravitating through the awkward nights sneaking around in the hallways, just to see each other for no good reason, towards the part where they’d be skipping lunch to meet at their rooms and make out on each other’s bunks, hoping none of their roommates would have the same idea. Shiro's teeth on his throat, his nails on Shiro's back, it was never not the end of the path drawn between them from first time they saw each other in the mess hall like that.

Keith flushes a bit too now, blinking himself out of his daze and realizing what he’s thinking of, and where they are. He’s glad the emergency lights are red too, so Shiro can’t see the red on his face -except Shiro is smirking at him, and Keith almost groans in embarrassment. He can never get anything past Shiro. He couldn’t then, and he still can’t now.

“Sorry,” he mutters. “I’m trying to stop, it’s just everything… reminds me of you all the time.”

Shiro nods, understanding. He watches Keith, cocking his head. “I think about you all the time too, you know.”

And it’s meant to be reassuring, but to Keith it feels like a punch to the face. Like he’s been hit by a truck and left out in the pavement to die. Shiro’s like that sometimes, a truck out of breaks that hits him over and over, and leaves Keith reeling, lost as he runs past.

He feels Shiro’s hand closing around his neck before he sees it, and when Keith looks up, the look on Shiro’s face feels like a thousand trucks running over him, all at once.

“I want to, Keith,” he says. “I want things to go back to the way they were. The way we were.”

“I know,” Keith nods, swallowing around that “we” that echoes in his ears like sirens. It’s not the first time Shiro acknowledges what he remembers of what they were -but it’s the first time he _says_ it.

“I just don’t-”

“I know,” he repeats, cutting Shiro short because he _knows_ , but he doesn’t want to hear the words. He puts his hands around the cold steel fingers on his neck and buries his face in that mockery of a hand they left Shiro with -whatever monster they’ve made out of him, trading the hand that used to hold his for a weapon that could just as easily crush him, this is Shiro’s hand now, and Keith still wants to feel it on every inch of himself.

Shiro turns his hand over and runs his thumb down the side Keith’s face, traces the curve of his lower lip. “I’ll get there,” he promises. “I just need a little time.”

Keith nods, brushing his lips on Shiro’s fingers as he swallows down the lump on his throat.

“I know.”

* * *

Shiro gets in the water at last.

They have a good day on the small colony they stop by for supplies. People are hearing of them now, hearing of Voltron and starting to feel a little hope again. It’s not enough hope to overthrow whole empires with yet, but it’s enough to get tongues wagging, if you know who to ask and what to listen for.

Lance gets them a solid tip on the schedule of Galra patrols around the colony's twin moons, and it’s all they need for Pidge, Hunk and Coran to draw a formation that lets them hit fast and draw both ships out of the blind spots they dock in, then form Voltron to take them both out at once. It’s not a grand feat -the colony is hardly big enough to be called a planet. But it’s a victory anyway, and they’ll take each one they can get.

Back in the castle, the others are celebrating, playing some hybrid of polo and dodge that mostly involves Allura and Pidge massacring Hunk, Lance and Coran with balls to the head. Shiro watches them from the shallower end of the pool, floating in the water from his torso down, arms propped up on the edge. He’s still wearing the black base layer jumpsuit of their uniform, long sleeves rolled out, pants rolled up to his calves, and he’s a sight to see, fully clothed in a swimming pool. He’s dry from the shoulders up, and he’s warned Lance twice already about any jokes of pulling him under by his feet.

Keith watches Shiro watching the others, sitting beside him by the edge of the pool, his feet on the water now, a strange reflection and reversal of their usual places around here.

“So all I needed to get you to swim with me,” Keith jokes, “Was to liberate a small enslaved colony from the clutches of an evil empire.”

Shiro laughs, leaning his head back to rest on the towel folded behind him and glance back at Keith, grinning at him upside down. “Well, you know. Freedom is kind of a turn on.”

Keith snorts, and Shiro turns on his side to look up at him straight. His voice sounds different, mellower when he asks, “You don’t wanna get in now?”

Keith stares at Shiro for a moment, longer than he means to. Shiro looks lighter. Softer, blurring around the edges. He knows Shiro like this -impulsive, unstoppable- willing to jump from rooftops and fly cruiser ships into uncharted moons just to prove that he _could_ ,  so drunk on the feeling that they could conquer the world just by reaching high enough he’d forget his own words of caution, of patience: even for a blind jump, there has to be a safe place to land. Keith knows him like this, and he knows this is a Shiro that’s risky to follow -high on the moment, but this moment isn’t theirs to steal _._ Whatever Shiro’s offering here, it doesn’t feel his to take.

“Keith, man, we need you your help here,” he hears Lance calling from farther across the water.

His eyes trace a path from the white of Shiro’s bangs to the tip of his nose, the scar across his face, the line of his jaw to the curve of his lips. The water around his feet feels like it’s scalding against his skin now, and Keith pulls them out like he’s burning in it.

“Handle it,” he calls out, but his eyes are still locked on Shiro’s, an uncomfortable stalemate where neither of them realized there even was a game on to begin with.

Keith brings his knees up against his chest, aware of his defensive body language but unable to stop himself until he’s practically folded in half, and with a small shudder he looks away. Time is time, but this isn't enough.

“I’m good, thanks,” he answers, watching Allura dunk Coran’s head under the water in the distance, but not really seeing them at all.


	5. Chapter 5

It’s a thin line, this push and pull between them, this game of here and there, then and now, and Keith has finally lost track of where they stand.

Shiro doesn’t come back after that evening with the others. He doesn’t show up the next night, and the night after that, and on the third night Keith spends alone in the stark white of that empty hall, the water colder than ever around his feet, he starts to accept that they’ve lost. Shiro's made his move, but it wasn't the right time, the right reason, and Keith hates the part of himself that has to be the one to pull back for a change, but it is what it is, and this is where they stand now -with nothing inbetween. At some point where they weren’t looking, that line snapped and ran away from them.

Part of Keith wants to take a page from Lance’s suggestion and flush his head down a toilet alright; drown in it if he can. Part of him has always known this was one of the many possible outcomes he should have prepared for when he took Shiro away from that quarantine tent, not thinking, never thinking about what next.

And part of him did. Part of him is prepared to swallow his pride, to shut down and bottle his feelings away, to let go of what he wants, if that's what Shiro needs. If that's what’s best for him, for now or for good. Shiro’s safety is all that matters to him now, and Keith’s willing to give up on anything he may’ve wanted for himself, once, if it means Shiro’s better off this way.

He misses the steps approaching him, somehow, and when Shiro calls out his name Keith jumps so fast on his feet he almost slips and falls backwards into the pool. Shiro’s hand on his wrist is the only thing that keeps him from falling, and Keith has to dig his heels in so Shiro can pull him forward, gently, carefully, without toppling both of them over.

“You alright?” Shiro asks as Keith steadies himself. “You looked pretty out of it, there.”

“Sure, yeah, just... thinking,” Keith nods, running a hand through his hair, and again, unsure what to do with himself when Shiro lets go of his wrist. Shiro frowns, the start of a question in his face, and Keith waves a hand in the air like that explains anything.

There’s no sensible way to put this.

“I was breaking up with you in my head, ok. Letting you go.”

Shiro blinks, once, twice -frozen in place. “Right.”

There’s a silence that stretches between them as they stare at each other blankly, both waiting for whatever comes next, but it turns out sometimes nothing comes next. There’s nothing he can really say after that.

Shiro’s whole stance has changed, and he looks guarded now, wary when he clears his throat and finally asks,

“Are we actually...?”

“I don’t know,” Keith sighs, whatever words could possibly fill in that blank space -doing something here? going somewhere with this? getting back to where they were? even still together after all this? dancing aimlessly around each other with no purpose or direction?- falling heavy between them, like one of them needs to say it if this is supposed to mean something, but neither wants to be the one who says it and makes it real.

“I don’t know what we’re doing, Shiro.”

Shiro smiles to himself, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “That’s the thing, isn’t it.”

Keith watches him as Shiro lays his towel over a chair and knocks his shoes off, one foot, then the other.

“I want you to see something,” he says, and reaches for the laces on his waistband. He fumbles a bit with them, fingers clumsy even as he tries to still himself, and heat rises up Keith’s neck as he realizes what Shiro is doing. Shiro takes in a breath and pulls his sweater pants down his legs, steps out, slow, deliberate, one foot, then the other. He stands back, arms idle at his sides, and tries to look up at Keith, but his eyes never make it higher than the line of Keith’s chest.

The blood warming Keith’s face freezes in his veins as Shiro stands in front of him, open for once, in swimming shorts that barely pass for underwear,  and Keith takes in what he’s really seeing.

The jagged, semi circular scar on Shiro’s left thigh is the first thing that catches his eye, but not the last. Something big went through there, and Keith can’t help himself stepping closer, craning his head around Shiro’s leg to see if it came out on the other side. The same scar sits on the back of his thigh, but darker, even more jagged, and Keith realizes that was probably the entry point. He wonders if the dark blemishes came from some kind of poison.

“Spear?” he asks, his fingers hovering near and twitching back, wanting to touch but not sure if he should.

“Fang, actually,” Shiro answers, a little too casual, a little too distant. “The acid burn was from the suckers. I don’t remember most of them, but that one was… yeah.”

Keith doesn’t even want to ask what kind of species has fangs the size of his fist, _and_ poisonous tentacles to top it with.

That one’s the biggest, ugliest mark Keith can spot on his legs, but there are dozens of others. Cuts and scars scatter across his thighs, crisscrossing his skin. Dark purple veins run up his calves where an injury settled wrong, clotting the blood there. It turns something in Keith’s stomach, makes his nails dig into the palms of his hands. The feet, though, the only part of his body Shiro’s let the others see, Keith realizes, are clean-no scarring, no burn marks, no burst veins, no visible damage. Keith wonders if boots were the only thing Shiro had for armor in what sounds more and more like a nightmare he doesn’t know how Shiro even survived, and another thought crosses his mind.

Keith looks up, and sure enough Shiro is looking at him too, studying his face as Keith takes in this glimpse of the damage that’s been done to him, touches only the surface of what Shiro needs him to understand. His hand moves almost on its own, fingers brushing Shiro’s shirt just below his navel, giving the fabric the lightest of pulls. They’re close enough that Keith can feel Shiro’s breath on his face, and he knows Shiro can feel his breath too when he asks,

“Let me see it. All of it.”

Shiro swallows, his eyes clouded with something Keith can’t put on a name on. But he nods, once, and Keith’s hand falls on the first patch of skin that bares under his fingers as he pulls the shirt up slowly, just an inch or two -enough to reveal the long horizontal scar crossing over Shiro’s midriff. This one scarred clean, no jagged ends, but the skin around it is a sickly blue, and Keith can’t begin to imagine what happened there.

It gets worse. His left hand joins the right as he lifts Shiro’s shirt up from the sides, and this _should_ be everything Keith wanted, his hands on Shiro’s chest again, feeling the heat and the touch of his skin. But it’s sickening, it’s maddening, it’s painful to see the way the cuts and bruises and scars pepper all over his chest by the hundreds, crossing into each other until Keith can’t tell where one ends and the next one begins. The way his skin looks blotched and stained, a patchwork in shades of white, purple and blue from healing so many injuries in the same places over and over again. The way it looks paper thin and emaciated even stretching across tight, taut muscles like that. It eats Keith inside to just stand there and stare at what’s left of Shiro like this, and the feeling of absolute impotence that washes over him almost brings Keith to his knees as his eyes follow the patch of charred skin that starts above Shiro’s navel and goes up, and up, and up, under the rest of the shirt he can’t roll over anymore, and further beyond.

“How far does it go?” he hears himself asking, but it’s not like it matters to know. He just needs to say something before the bile piling on the back of his throat comes up to choke him.

“All the way across,” Shiro answers, in that vaguely casual tone again, his voice distant enough to tell Keith he’s not quite here, with him.

Keith doesn’t blame Shiro for it -he doesn’t want to be here either. He wants to close his eyes and go, take Shiro away, back to the start, do over again. Not this life over again, but a different one, one where Shiro is whole, safe in his hands.

But Keith has to stay here now more than ever, he knows; for Shiro, for both of them. He holds the fabric of Shiro’s top as high on his chest as it goes and _looks_ , really looks at him. He takes each scar in, runs his fingers over each jagged little end, feels the texture of Shiro’s skin changing from leathery over his burns to smooth over the cuts that healed clean; and when he lays the palm of his hand over Shiro’s heart, over the torn skin of the entry wound he doesn’t need to check behind his back to know that it went all the way through too, Keith has to rest his forehead on Shiro’s shoulder for a tic, taking his breaths deep and slow, not even angry anymore. Just tired. Tired of failing Shiro where it mattered the most.

“Do I want to know how you survived this one?”

Shiro chuckles low, leaning his chin on the side of Keith’s head. “Probably not,” he whispers into Keith’s hair.

Keith lets the shirt roll down, hiding this wall that stands between them. His hand closes over Shiro’s heart again, feeling it beat under his fist as Shiro runs steel fingers through his hair, scratching lightly at the nape of his neck, and Keith feels himself melting into the touch.

“You’re still Shiro to me,” Keith breathes into his shoulder. His hand splays out across Shiro’s heart, fingers reaching to trace a scar on his collarbone that peeks out from under his shirt. “This -all of this. It’s part of you now, but you’re still the same to me.”

The fingers on his hair still for a second, along with the beat of Shiro’s heart under his hand, but then Keith feels that shaky breath on his skin again, and he knows Shiro’s here, now. With him.

He’s looking down at their feet, head buried on Shiro’s shoulder, when a flash of red catches his eyes and he glances up Shiro’s legs, realizing something that hadn't sunk yet.

“Did you come here to swim?” he asks, eyeing the red strip of Shiro’s shorts that peeks out under his shirt.

“I came here to _try_ ,” Shiro answers, still muttering into his hair. “But this is nice, too.”

Keith almost rolls his eyes, but he can’t disagree that the hand on his neck feels better than any twenty laps around a pool right now.

“Another day?”

Shiro nods, shuffling a little closer. “We’re getting there.”


	6. Chapter 6

“Are you guys doing it in the pool?” Pidge asks over breakfast, making Lance choke on his goo until Hunk has to slap him on the back a couple times. “I’ve seen you two going out there after dinner. I hope you’re not doing it _in_ the water, we swim in there too. That’s disgusting.”

Keith freezes on his seat with a mouthful of coffee in his mouth, or what passes for coffee out here, scalding his tongue the longer he stares into his cup, unable to swallow with the way his throat is shutting down.

“We would, but,” Shiro answers for them, pausing to swallow down his goo and wipe his mouth with a napkin before finishing, as much for manners as for effect. “Keith broke up with me.”

The coffee leaving Keith’s mouth when he wheezes spatters across the table and spills over the floor, and beside him Lance goes into a second coughing fit without even recovering from the first one.

Pidge throws one hand up, indignant, and glares at Keith like he’s traded Shiro for Zarkon himself. “What the hell, man,” and she gestures at the length of Shiro, “ _Really_?”

Keith sputters, his face starting to burn. “I did _not_ -”

“Tragic, I know,” Shiro answers her, cutting Keith short. His shoulders sag and he looks like a kicked puppy, all sad eyes and -is he _pouting_?

“Oh man, we do not need this kind of drama on the team,” Hunk adds from the other end, still patting Lance in the back as he tries to catch his breath.

“What does that mean?” Allura asks, sitting across the table in front of Shiro, just beside the empty seat Keith just drenched in coffee. “Breaking up?”

“It’s when you’re all kissy-kissy with someone, and then you’re not,” Pidge explains, sort of, but Allura seems to understand.

She looks at Shiro, who is nodding miserably _and still pouting_ and Keith’s gonna murder him, he swears. Her eyes widen then, and she rests the spoon on her chin, looking at Keith just a little too scandalized, and Keith swears they’re doing this on purpose now. Allura is just as bad as Matt at pretending not to be in on Shiro’s number like this.

“Surely you cannot simply part with your bond mate?” she asks, affecting her accent to sound terribly heartbroken over it, and Keith wants to punch Shiro in the ear, a little bit.

“Uh, on Earth we actually can,” Hunk interjects. “We do. All the time.”

“Shiro is not my _bond_ -”

“See,” Shiro cuts him again, sighing into his food. “Tragic.”

“How peculiar,” Allura adds with a grave nod, glancing at a Coran who looks genuinely appalled, and Keith can feel his whole face burning when Coran looks sadly between Shiro and him like he really doesn't understand.

“I’m gonna murder you,” Keith mutters at Shiro, who glances sideways at him with the slightest glint on his eyes _that little shit_ , and goes back to eating his goo with his perfectly well mannered small bites and napkin tips to the corners of his mouth that barely hold his smirk in.

“I hate you,” Lance groans, from Keith’s other side, head buried in his hands over the table.

Keith pushes his bowl away and sighs, sinking into his chair. “For what’s worth it, I hate me, too.”

 

* * *

 

They’ve never put a name to what they were before, and something in Keith rattles to hear everyone else do it for them.

“What the hell were you thinking?” he asks, later, but it’s not anger or anything. He just doesn’t understand.

Shiro is staring into the water now, frowning at something Keith can’t see. They sit near the ladder, side by side, still in their clothes. Still in their shoes. Keith didn’t even bring his towel tonight -he’s really not in that mood.

“How do you figure they filter all this water?” Shiro asks, and Keith shrugs, wondering about anything but that.

“Magic, I guess.”

“It’s always so clean,” Shiro adds, more to himself than to Keith. “So warm.”

Keith stares out the skylight above, counting on the stars the infinite number of ways in which he doesn’t care about the magical pool water in the magical castle battleship right now.

“I had to,” Shiro smiles at him, and it’s a boyish, cheery smile that almost looks wrong on this person Shiro is now, if Keith didn’t remember it from the Shiro he used to be then. “Matt would never have let you live that one down.”

“Holt’s not here,” Keith grunts, and it comes out sharper than he means it, but he doesn’t have time to regret or apologize for it before Shiro is chuckling to himself.

“No, he’s not,” Shiro agrees, and his smile falters a little bit at the edges, but it stays there, resilient. “That’s what I was thinking.”

Keith frowns at him, and still that smile persists.

“I was thinking I wanna try swimming again,” Shiro finally answers, glancing back at the water, and Keith has to take a deep breath to stop himself from groaning. He runs a hand over his face, feeling that truck of Shiro's impulses and contradictions run headfirst into him, over and over again.

Shiro stands then. Walks over to his towel, neatly folded over the table this time, and gingerly starts to step out of his shoes, fumbling with the laces on his pants before hooking his fingers on the waistband and slowly pulling them down, his hands careful, his gestures measured that way he only does things when he's not quite sure he should.

He’s humming a song, something Keith doesn’t remember, then vaguely does, then it dawns on him -the anthem, the song in the speakers, every morning five a.m., the wake up call echoing across each room, each hall. The song on TV when they showed the launching, everywhere on the news for weeks on end, the song on TV when they showed the pictures, the names, the accident - _pilot error,_ half a page on the paper and no other word; the same song in the speakers again next morning, waking Keith up to another new day, waking Keith up to a world without Shiro, and he- he hates it. Keith hates everything, then. He hates Shiro, and he hates himself, and he hates _this_ , he hates _them_ , he hates the day he ever found this pool, he hates the day they ever met, he hates the day he ever picked up that recruitment flyer, he hates-

“Fine,” he says, and when Shiro turns around to look at him, Keith is jumping up on his feet and throwing his jacket on the floor. “You wanna swim, let’s do this then.”

And he jumps.

He jumps in the water like that, T-shirt and jeans and boots and all, and it feels _good_. It feels great to feel his socks sogging up with water and his shirt sticking to his chest, his jeans soaking up and weighing down on his legs. It feels like punching a wall without breaking his hand for once, and he could damn well use a wall to punch right now.

When he comes up for air, Shiro is gaping at him, his face a mess of different questions at once.

“What are you doing?”

Keith throws his hands around, gesturing wide. “ _Swimming_ ,” he answers, and it’s not  bitter, exactly, but it’s not exactly _nice_ either. “Isn’t that what you want?”

Shiro’s face breaks down into that look, the one that Keith knows all too well at this point. He lowers his head with a sigh, sitting back down by the edge again, his shoulders tensing as his eyes dart over the water, steel hand creeping up the back of his neck, a purple sheer lighting his face. The Shiro of then is gone then, and this is the Shiro of now.

Keith lets his hands down and hates himself a little more, just for good measure, before he dives in and swims over to where Shiro sits, coming up just below him, his shoulders framed by Shiro’s knees. Shiro smiles despite himself, his eyes as tender as he watches Keith settle between his legs, as filled with that same sorrow that haunts his face night and day around him.

He brings one hand to Keith’s face, brushing loose strands of wet hair back, running his fingers through Keith’s bangs.

“What do you want from me, Keith?”

“Us,” Keith answers, too fast, and maybe it’s not what either of them wants to hear right now, but it’s the truth, and it’s all he has.

“I want us back.”

Shiro’s eyes fill with an impossible, immeasurable sadness then, and for a moment Keith thinks he’s really done it this time. He’s gone and torn that line to pieces and thrown the rest of whatever was left between them away, too fast, too heavy, always pushing too much -but Shiro’s still playing with his hair when he shakes his head slightly.

“I realized something last night,” he tells Keith, curling a wet lock of hair around his finger. “How you saw me, that’s… who I am now.”

Keith swallows, the anger draining and dripping out of him like water, leaving behind just the sinking weight on his chest of Shiro’s next words, before he even says them.

“We can’t go back, Keith.”

He feels a stinging, needles in the back of his eyes, a hole in his chest he hasn’t felt since the day he found that Shiro was gone, that Shiro had -died, and it fills him with the same kind of emptiness he felt then; the same kind of silence of getting spaced out of a ship again except this time there’s no lion to save him. He’s a speck of nothing floating nowhere, turning to dust out in the infinite stretch of the stars.

Keith starts to pull away, but before he can turn his back, Shiro is hooking two fingers under his chin and tipping his face up and towards him. Shaking his head again, smiling at both of them because through all this and that and the things they know and shouldn’t have to say, Keith still doesn’t _get_ it.

“We have to move forward,” Shiro whispers into his forehead, and Keith feels like he’s dying a thousand new deaths when Shiro’s lips take hold of his again.

It feels like a hundred years since he last felt the taste of Shiro’s kiss.

There’s no measure to this, there’s no temperance or patience in the world that could make Keith slow down and think about now. He kisses Shiro back with abandon, claiming his lips over and over, grasping at Shiro’s hair and propping himself on those shoulders as Shiro grabs him by the waist and pulls Keith out of the water, holds him above the surface and tight against his chest. Keith bites at Shiro’s lips, starving for the taste of him, and pulls at Shiro’s hair sharply, earning himself a deep, throaty moan into his mouth.

When they finally part, Shiro is left gasping for air, and Keith can barely breathe, can’t stop coming back for another kiss, and another, stealing what little breath Shiro has left in him as he kisses the corners of Shiro’s mouth, grazes the stubble under his lips, hands digging into his hair, scratching the back of his neck, making new marks of his own if he has to reclaim Shiro’s skin as his. They’re laughing, sort of, breathing the same air again, together, and Shiro takes one last kiss, and one last again, before he has to let Keith back down into the water, arms cramping from Keith’s weight.

Keith’s head is spinning, drunk on the taste that lingers in his mouth as he wades back, just enough to take all of Shiro in -flushed, breathless like that, watching Keith with no trace of fear left in his eyes.

He holds a hand out. “Come on,” he calls over, breathing heavily. Hungry, still.

Shiro considers his hand for a moment, but then shakes his head and pulls himself up to stand. Keith watches him standing and walking away, pushing one chair to the side and out of his path, and he doesn’t get what Shiro is doing until he’s taken enough distance and turned around, eyeing the path between his feet and the edge. Keith practically beams when he realizes, and he quickly swims over to the side, getting himself out of the way, and in a better position to watch this again.

The grace in Shiro’s sprint is a flash, like the form that runs past Keith’s eyes in a blink when he jumps and dives clean, leaving only a rippling wave behind. It’s like watching a shooting star, and Keith wants to howl, his chest almost bursting from the speed of his heart.

Shiro’s almost all the way across the pool when he comes up again, and when he turns around he’s smiling so wide Keith can even forgive how dumb his bangs look plastered across his face like that. He swims over to Shiro, who pulls Keith into his arms as soon as he’s near enough, and he runs a hand through Shiro’s bangs, combing them back with his fingers, committing this new changing image of white bangs blending into black hair to his memories, in the same place he keeps the picture of cleaning wet hair out of Shiro’s face when it was all black, before.

“Better?” he asks, tipping his head to point at where they stand, on the deepest side of the pool now.

Shiro nods, and this close to him Keith can see the tiniest crinkle on the corners of Shiro’s eyes as he smiles. “Much better now.”

Shiro leans in to kiss him again, but Keith pulls away, shaking his head no this time. When Shiro frowns, Keith points to his shirt, tugging lightly at his sleeve.

“Let me have you,” he asks, hand on Shiro’s heart. “All of you, this time.”

Shiro glances at the door, and back at Keith, and down at himself, and back at him again, and Keith holds his gaze, fingers slipping under Shiro’s sleeve to graze over the patch of his skin where flesh turns into steel, caressing the scars where they turn into needles burying under his arm. The arm that was his, and the arm that’s part of him now, become one and the same under Keith’s hand.

Shiro makes his decision and lets go of Keith’s waist to pull his top over his head, revealing the whole of his chest, his arms and his back as he turns to throw the shirt over the nearest edge. Keith looks, stares straight at the worst parts of it and fights the urge to look away, because he still doesn’t want to see this, doesn’t want to know all the ways they hurt and broke and took Shiro away from him, but he needs Shiro to know. He needs Shiro to see that Keith sees him for what he is, all of him, and still _wants_ him -jagged scars and charred burns, busted veins and stretch marks, sickly, greenish blemishes and all. Every inch of it that is him, and it’s _his_.

Shiro nods at Keith’s clothes, an eyebrow raised at him. “You know that’s gonna take days to dry,” he points at Keith’s drenched jeans and boots.

Keith shrugs, slips his arms under Shiro’s and runs his hands over his scarred back, nestling against Shiro’s chest. He’s lost in space fighting evil empires with one hunting knife and one pair of underwear, but Shiro’s here with him. He could do worse than wet.

When Shiro turns to kiss him this time, Keith lets him take his lips and sighs into it, the words in his head ringing like it doesn't matter if this has a name to it anymore - it’s theirs to have again, and it’s all that matters to him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You thought it was over but SYKE there's an epilogue too. ・∀・


	7. Epilogue

“I seriously hate you so much,” Lance says, watching the others play.

He’s taken the other side of the ladder across from Keith, the two leaning against the pool wall, strategically placed to catch the burst of water that runs out of the filters onto their backs, like a makeshift hot tub massaging the sore muscles of their shoulders.

“Okay,” Keith answers, watching Shiro play Pidge’s version of dodgeball on water over by the other end. With him on the boys’ team, their defeat isn’t as humiliating, but Allura still can throw a mean curve ball when he’s least expecting.

He’s wearing his black top with sleeves rolled down, and leggings that go down to his calves too, but no one finds any need to comment on it, and Keith doesn’t even need to ask them not to, or explain why. He throws everyone a silent thanks as he watches Shiro laughing, having fun even as Allura catches him with a ball to the side of the head again. 

Lance is watching Shiro too. Keith doesn’t need to look to know.

“You owe me like a hundred laps, I’m just saying.”

Keith snorts. “Like hell I do.”

He vaguely registers Lance groaning at him, making noises at the roof, howling into his hands, calling him any number of things in Altean words he’s probably not using right, then huffing and crossing his arms, finishing his tantrum with a pout as they stare at Shiro again.

“I’m not into him like that, you know,” he adds, almost as an afterthought. “That’s not what I mean.”

“I know,” Keith answers, pushing away from the wall as Shiro waves their way, calling both of them over. He looks back at Lance as he wades a few feet away.

“I’ll kick your ass in the simulator a hundred times if you wanna work this over,” Keith explains, turning to glance at him one last time. “But I’m not going against you on the only thing where you’re actually better than me.”

He waits a tic for it to register, and turns to swim away just as Lance is going “ _Hey_.”

“Wait!” Lance calls, swimming after him, faster than him, past him, reaching the others before Keith makes it there. “Did your hear that? Did you guys hear that?”

“Hear what, dude, it’s a minefield in here,” Hunk half-shouts, pulling Lance out of the way just as one of Allura’s missiles whistles past his ear.

Shiro looks at Keith with that look of _what did you do this time_ , and Keith does his best impression of looking completely innocent and obviously guilty at the same time.

"I didn’t say anything,” he claims, just before Pidge knocks him out with a hit straight to the face.

 

* * *

 

“I should’ve peed in the pool.”

“Keith,” Shiro warns him.

“Dude,” Hunk groans from his chair.

I should’ve jacked off in the pool.”

“ _Keith_.”

“Dude.”

“I should’ve jacked _you_ off in the pool.”

“ ** _Keith_**.”

“ _Dude_ ,” and Hunk raises his bowl to show him. “Breakfast, okay. We’re eating here.”

On his left, Lance is having a minor choking episode, wheezing into the tablecloth, and Keith reaches out to slap him on the back, once, twice, and the third time comes out this short of a punch.

“Sorry,” he says to Lance, patting his back where he slapped too hard.

“Oh, so, to _him_ you apologize,” Hunk notes.

Keith shrugs. “ _He_ didn’t knock me out.”

“Gross,” Pidge finally speaks up, finishing her goo. “I’m gonna have the whole pool drained. You two are disgusting.”

“Nothing happened in the pool,” Shiro cuts both of them, his tone growing more and more annoyed at all of them at once. “And we’re not talking about that over breakfast.”

“It was pretty funny when you went out, though,” Lance says.

“It wasn’t _funny_ ,” Keith snaps, his hand twitching on Lance’s back, feeling like punching him again now. “She could’ve broken my nose.”

“I’m just saying,” Pidge adds, “I’m not going near that water again.”

“Dude, it _was_ kinda funny,” Hunk laughs, and then he’s motioning with his hand like a missile falling to ground. “You sank down like, woosh-”

Lance is laughing with him, so Keith has to slap his back so hard again Lance almost falls out of his chair.

“Fuck you guys.”

“Keith…” and Shiro’s taking his hand under the table, making Keith look at him.

Keith rolls his eyes and mutters a “S _orry, princess_ ” at Allura, who is cheerily watching their cross conversations, trying to keep up with them.

“Fascinating, isn’t it,” Coran whispers to her, and she nods her agreement. Her eyes light up then, with that look even Shiro knows is trouble incoming, and they wince before she even speaks.

“What does that mean,” Allura asks, turning to Keith. “To jack-”

“No,” Shiro cuts in, before Pidge even opens her mouth. “No, we’re not doing that over breakfast.”

Keith snorts, his hand leaving Shiro’s under the table to rest on the small of his back. He lifts the hem of Shiro’s top just enough to slip his hand under and rubs gently on the skin there, feeling the ridge of another nasty scar he found there the other night. Shiro said this one actually still hurts sometimes, so Keith makes a point to run his fingers over it now and then, soothing, giving what comfort he can.

Shiro goes back to eating, but the small flush on his face is for him, Keith knows.

Across the table, Allura is still watching them, Keith in particular as he watches Shiro. “It seems your bonds aren’t so different from ours,” she says, looking away as if she’s intruding on something private between them.

Keith cocks his head, glancing around. Lance and Hunk are laughing about something else now. Pidge and Shiro are engaged in a different conversation, but Shiro still notices when Keith’s eyes linger on his back, and he turns briefly to shoot him a smile.

“I guess,” Keith answers, feeling Shiro’s skin warm under his hand.

“I’m glad,” she says, going back to her meal.

Before Keith can look away, another thought lights up on her face. “Oh, Keith. Did you ever find the library you asked me about?

“Wait,” Hunk interrupts. “There’s a library in the castle?”

“Of course there’s a library,” Coran snorts, almost insulted. “With thousands of tomes, in every language if every civilization the Altean empire encountered, not to mention King Alfor’s collection of constellation maps of almost every cluster syst-”

“Library in the castle!” Pidge almost squees as she and Hunk scramble to their feet and rush out the door, stumbling over each other to get there first. Keith notices neither of them asked anyone where the library _is_ , but they’ll probably realize it at some point. Probably when they turn the wrong way and end up where he did the first time.

Beside him, Lance groans loudly as he forces himself to stand up. “A library, honestly,” he grumbles as he drags his feet, following after them. “What a bunch of nerds I get to hang out with.”

Keith turns back to Allura, shaking his head, and he’s fighting a smirk as Lance disappears around the corner. “No, I never found it. Ended up at the pool instead.”

“For what’s worth it,” Shiro says, his hand slipping over Keith’s thigh under the table as he gives him a quick wink. “I’m glad you did.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this far! This started as just a small drabble and spiraled out of control in the end. I didn't expect it to get this long, or to get such amazing feedback, but I'm really grateful for every kudo and every comment along the way. Thank you so much for the support. ♡
> 
> I'm [on tumblr](http://riverbanks.tumblr.com/) too! ヽ(’ ▽’ )ノ Feel free to come say hi or throw more prompts at me. Who knows when the next prompt drabble will spiral into 12k of space boyfriends brooding and being dumb at each other for ages like this. /o\


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